


didn't want to be your ghost

by flojo



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sibling Bonding, jyn/cassian isn't established only hinted at, sort of kid fic, they're like teenagers, yay for adopted siblings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:57:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14832692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flojo/pseuds/flojo
Summary: as far as his brain could date back to, bodhi remembered jyn by his side. his first actual, clear memory involves her, age six while he was three. they were in their backyard, jyn swinging on their play set. they didn’t say anything for awhile until jyn pointed out the peculiar shape of a cloud and went on about learning how clouds work at school. bodhi remembers admiring her, proclaiming her as the smartest person he knows. to this day he still believes that.she’s not as nice anymore when she turns thirteen.





	didn't want to be your ghost

As far as his brain could date back to, Bodhi remembered Jyn by his side. His first actual, clear memory involves her, age six while he was three. They were in their backyard, Jyn swinging on their play set. They didn’t say anything for awhile until Jyn pointed out the peculiar shape of a cloud and went on about learning how clouds work at school. Bodhi remembers admiring her, proclaiming her as the smartest person he knows. To this day he still believes that.

She’s not as nice anymore when she turns thirteen. 

He thinks Chirrut and Baze could sense it, the inevitable swing in her mood, because they started taking him out for ice cream or a one-on-one grocery trip, even though usually they all go together to pick out the things they like instead of having it be forgotten. They forget lots of things, especially when Baze takes him, and Jyn is the only one who faults him for it.

Bodhi doesn’t like it when her door is closed. She never closed it before, and never told Bodhi he couldn’t come in. Jyn keeps it shut all the time and he’s not sure what to make of it, so he doesn’t knock or even approach her room, because he’s seen what happens when Baze’s fist raps against the door and all he gets is a shout in response.

He doesn’t think he’s _scared_ of Jyn. Just a little anxious she’ll lash out if he does something wrong. Chirrut and Baze try to assure him it’s not his fault for the way Jyn’s acting, but he doesn’t really believe them.

It’s hidden in the way Chirrut and Baze speak to each other outside of Bodhi’s room at night. The door is always open, even just a little, and Bodhi can hear them discuss Jyn’s behavior. Baze is reluctant on whether Jyn will ever be her normal self again, but Chirrut is positive, and that’s the only thing giving Bodhi any hope.

A few months after her fourteenth birthday and a few million arguments later, Jyn starts therapy. Bodhi’s come to this place before, when he was much younger. It felt safe back then but Jyn sits in the waiting room with them, her arms crossed and tear marks staining her cheeks from another fight earlier, and suddenly Bodhi doesn’t want to be here.

He remembers squirming next to Chirrut in his chair, wanting to go outside and wait in the car or get some water. He hopes nothing terrible happens to Jyn. Nothing ever happened to Baze after coming here, but he’s just… worried.

Therapy does help, though. The first few months were the same, and on Bodhi’s eleventh birthday, Jyn storms out of the room and slams her bedroom door shut behind her. Bodhi tries his best to hold back tears for the rest of the day, at least until he’s getting ready for bed, when Chirrut comes into his room to turn off the light with Baze and they both apologize for Jyn’s behavior. There’s no promises she’ll get better, but Bodhi needs it in that moment.

He never lost hope in Jyn. She was slowly improving after six months in therapy. She came out of her room more often and had small conversations without lashing out unexpectedly. Bodhi even manages to make her smile occasionally.

On his twelfth birthday, someone knocks on his door while he’s putting together one of his presents, a model plane. He expects it to be Baze or Chirrut, so he lets them in without glancing over his shoulder.

It’s Jyn, who’s fifteen now, and still locks herself in her room and cuts her own hair in their shared bathroom and gets her own dinner. She’s kinder, just doesn’t… apply herself. Therapy makes her a better person but it’s like she’s scared of that.

She sits on the edge of his bed cautiously, beaming gently, careful to avoid the pieces of the model strewn across the bed. Bodhi stares at her, completed pieces falling out of his hands, slightly in awe of his older sister showing up in his room. It makes up for last years incident.

“Hey,” she greets him in a soft voice, almost insecure. “I didn’t… get the chance to see if you liked your present.”

She had gotten him a present this year, and after she retreated to her room for the remainder of the day, Baze leaned close to him and explained how Jyn had gotten it herself, unprompted. Bodhi felt ecstatic.

It was a pair of pilot goggles, probably old-fashioned, but he adores them. He glances up, but he can’t see them where they rest around the crown of his head. He grins and nods enthusiastically, not really finding his voice yet.

Jyn smiles back, almost warily. “I’m glad. I just… wanted to do something. To make it up to you.”

Bodhi leans in closer, “what do you mean?”

“The way I’ve been acting,” Jyn grimaces. “I know I haven’t been the best to you.”

“Oh.”

“I never mean to take it out on you,” Jyn says, “I didn’t think I was doing that.”

Bodhi winces. “It did hurt… when you didn’t talk to me,” he swallowed, “I thought I did something wrong.”

Jyn shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, her hand coming up to touch his forearm. She touches him so gently it nearly makes him shiver but he’s too anxious to move.

“Don’t blame yourself for my mistake.” She whispers it, and before Bodhi gets a chance to process it, she’s getting up from his bed and leaving the room. He doesn’t miss the way Jyn reaches for the doorknob, going to close it, before remembering this isn’t her room.

He hopes she knows his door is always open for her specifically, as its always been.

 

A few days pass. Jyn stays quiet.

Usually it’s a bad thing, but now it’s… good. She’s not distancing herself. She still goes in her room, but she comes out for movie night, but Bodhi thinks that’s only because Chirrut decided on _Pacific Rim_. Jyn goes to her room as soon as the end credits appear, mumbling a small “g’night.”

Bodhi smiles up at her as she steps over his feet, and she glances at him for a fleeting second, and maybe it was only his imagination, but he thinks she smiled back. Even just a little.

He can’t remember the last time he felt this comfortable around her.

-

“Hey, Jyn,” Cassian approaches them after school, while she and Bodhi are waiting for Chirrut and Baze to pick them up. He looks a little nervous, and Bodhi feels worried before he turns away to not invade their conversation.

Bodhi’s not as scared around Jyn anymore, which is why he walked to the high school from his middle school instead of waiting for Chirrut and Baze on his own. He doesn’t have very many friends there, and he always liked it when Jyn got released from school earlier than he did when they were younger, and she would sit in the elementary school hallway, waiting for him.

Even though he knew it was rude, Bodhi couldn’t help but eavesdrop _just a little_ , out of curiosity. Jyn doesn’t have that many friends either but that’s only because people get the impression she’s scary and they shouldn’t mess with her. She’s mentioned Cassian a few times, called him a friend, but Bodhi thinks that’s only because she didn’t know how else to describe him.

“Do you- would you want to go bowling this weekend? Leia, Han, Kes, and Luke are going too.” Cassian fidgeted with the zipper on his jacket as he asked, pulling it up and back down without properly zipping it. Bodhi immediately looked away when he found himself watching the action.

Jyn answered quickly, “okay.” Bodhi wondered if she was smiling or avoiding Cassian’s gaze. Maybe both?

“Cool, uh- Leia will text you about it.”

Again: “okay.”

It was silent for a moment but Bodhi heard scuffing, like an awkward drag of shoes across the linoleum. “I’ll see you then. Bye, Jyn,”

“Bye.”

“Bye, Bodhi!”

Bodhi’s head snapped up upon hearing his name, “oh, bye!” He waved even though Cassian had his back turned.

Jyn didn’t say anything until she noticed Chirrut and Baze’s car pull into the zone reserved for student pick ups. They walked to the end of the grassy patch along the school, Bodhi entering the backseat first, placing his bag on the seat next to him. Jyn let out a deep sigh as she got situated in her seat.

“How was school?” Chirrut asked his usual question as soon as Baze pulled out of the line. They responded simultaneously with a lazy “good.” and didn’t elaborate. Bodhi knows Chirrut doesn’t expect them to say anything more. Bodhi would tell his dads about his day, but over time he had grown worried Jyn would be annoyed if he rambled.

The last thing he ever wants to do is get on Jyn’s nerves, and he knows he’s done it sometimes, when she’s washing dishes or doing her hair in their shared bathroom and he says something and her shoulders tense- that’s when Bodhi knows he’s not welcome around her. He distances himself as much as possible.

So he won’t say anything. Not for now, at least- if Jyn doesn’t show up to the dinner table that night then he’ll tell Chirrut and Baze about the latest project in science. But Jyn speaks up when they’re nearing home and he’s a little confused about it.

“I think I’m going bowling with some friends this weekend,” Jyn mentions, leaning over to see between the two front seats. “Is that okay?”

“Of course!” Chirrut responds cheerily, Baze nodding in agreement. The brief conversation ends there.

She comes to the dinner table that night. No one calls for her when dinner is ready, they had stopped doing that by the time she was fourteen. They learned she left her room to get her own dinner when the kitchen had been cleared and there was no one around to see her.

When Chirrut asks who invited her to bowling, she responds with a simple, “Cassian,” accompanied by a small smile. She quickly replaces it with her usual neutral expression while Baze goes around and picks up their cleared dishes.

Bodhi takes her talking as the all-clear to mention his project in science. Her shoulders don’t tense up when his voice rings with excitement.

 

Jyn comes to the dinner table the next night; Saturday. She eats quickly as to not keep Leia and Luke waiting when they come to pick her up. Bodhi thinks everyone is happier when she joins them.

 

When Jyn comes back from bowling, it’s nearing eleven and Bodhi is still awake, reading _The Giver_ ; it was assigned to everyone in English class and he didn’t want to fall behind and fail any pop quizzes on the chapters they were told to read on their own.

He hears her voice when the front door opens, telling Baze goodnight, and he knows she’s going to head to her room first thing. But then she appears in the doorway, hand resting on the door like she doesn’t know if she should knock or not, but Bodhi’s already seen her.

“Hi,” Bodhi speaks quietly, he’s afraid she’ll run off if he’s too loud. Her expression is neutral, but something’s telling Bodhi she wants to say something important to him and is conflicted. “Was bowling fun?”

“Hey. It was- yeah, it was good,” she crosses the room and sits at the end of his bed almost cautiously, eyeing him. “I beat Cassian and Han, so.”

Bodhi bites his cheek when he notices Jyn’s face light up. The corners of her lips lift up, if only a little, but Bodhi saw it. He felt himself begin to smile too.

Her smile falters and now it looks like she’s sad, about something Bodhi doesn’t know. He puts his book to the side and leans up.

“Is everything okay?” He asks in a soft voice, still afraid she’ll run off.

“Yeah, ‘course.” Except Bodhi can tell it’s not, that it hasn’t been. But she’s staring off at the wall, not focused in their conversation at all. Bodhi glances at the area she’s concentrated on, breath hitching when his eyes land on it.

It’s a picture of them on Halloween. Bodhi was six at the time, dressed as a ghostbuster. Jyn was nine, and had decided she was getting too old to dress up, but took Bodhi out around their neighborhood anyway. They stood together in a half-embrace, grins on their faces.

It’s one of the only pictures Bodhi has of them together. Pinned securely to his corkboard, he gazes at it almost every day, wondering if things will go back to the way they were before Jyn turned thirteen and suddenly became a stranger.

She is improving, though. And looking over at her now, Bodhi can’t help but smile a little. She’s still _Jyn_ , the same Jyn who helped him learn weird science facts, who was there every day of the new school year, who understood his anxiety possibly more than Chirrut and Baze did. She’s his sister and he wouldn’t trade her for any other sister, even one that didn’t hide themselves away and stayed quiet.

Bodhi got to his knees on his bed, crawling over a bit before wrapping his arms around Jyn’s shoulders, burying his head in the curve where her neck ends. She stiffens, but Bodhi just holds her tighter.

“Love you,” he murmurs softly. He missed telling her that every night before he went to bed, to hear her repeat it back to him.

Jyn’s hands grip at his arm, and Bodhi feels her shaking a little, which concerns him and he almost draws away before he hears, “I love you, too. So much, little brother.”

He starts crying right then, because she hasn’t said that to him since she was eleven, and he was only eight at the time, worrying that she would forget about him since she was in middle school. But she sat next to his bed with him, telling him it’d be _so difficult_ to forget someone like him. And Bodhi had forgotten about that moment, because he thought it was no longer true, but it is.

She never lost sight of him.

Jyn let’s go of his arm wrapped around her and maneuvers them a bit, so she’s facing him. She cups his face so carefully and meets his gaze, and Bodhi can tell her feelings are as intense as his.

“I did it for you,” Jyn says, “I needed to get better for myself, but also for you. You’re my brother, nothing has changed that, Bodhi, I-”

She collapses then, into his shoulder, in a fit of sobs. Bodhi just holds her closer and can’t help but smile, because he missed his sister so much and she’s been here, in the room across from his, the whole time. 

“It doesn’t matter; everything you’ve done in the past. You’re here now.” Bodhi says, and all Jyn does is nod, pulling away from his embrace to wipe her nose and laugh dryly at herself.

“I thought-” she hiccups, “I thought you would never forgive me. That I ruined a chance of that happening.”

Bodhi only tugs at a strand of her hair let loose from her bun gently, something he did when they were kids. “Never.”

-

Bodhi barely remembers what Jyn was like months ago. It’s been six months, half a year, and Jyn is sixteen now and has been out of therapy for a month. Bodhi comes with her to her last session, and Jyn comes back out to the waiting room, beaming.

They’ve never been closer than they are now, at least that’s what Bodhi believes. It’s weird, because it’s like nothing ever changed in the first place.

Jyn joins them on family expeditions to the grocery store and picks what movie they should rent that week, choosing more action filled ones than what Chirrut would usually go for. But whenever she decides on _Mission Impossible_ or _Ocean’s Eleven_ , Baze just ruffles her hair. They go out for ice cream and end up traveling to Denver for summer break. Bodhi’s even been introduced to Jyn’s friends, who she warmed up to after wanting to let more people in.

And it’s great- it’s so great. There’s a few slip ups and very rarely will Jyn lash out, but it’s just another bad day. A bump in the road.

Bodhi couldn’t ask for it to be any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> i dont have a funny quote to put here im emotional i love these two as siblings so muhc............ also dis my first star wars fic so im happie  
> tumblee blr : ouijabrain


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